Tag: rebecca barnes

When Darcy was younger, in the rare times when she could sit still for longer than two seconds, her grandmother would tell her stories. But that is not such an unusual thing, many grandmothers tell stories to their grandchildren, more often than not stories about their own childhood. But Grandma Becca’s stories were different. Although Darcy would only learn that in hindsight, almost twenty years later.

“They both were such punks,” Grandma Becca would sigh fondly, eyes catching on Darcy’s second-hand Captain America and Howling Commandos action figures scattered on the carpet. They’d been her dad’s originally, and so the paint was a little faded and scuffed. They weren’t like the new versions with the lights and the voices, but these ones were better because sometimes her dad would play, too.

“Even when they were grown men, soldiers, all I could think about was the idiotic boys I grew up with.”

Darcy would nod solemnly in response, because every eight year old girl knows that boys can be stupid sometimes.

“For one of my birthdays, they took me to Coney Island. Which was very fun, don’t get me wrong, but Bucky spent the entire time trying to stuff Steve full of hotdogs and candy then made him ride the Cyclone. I don’t know why they were so shocked when Steve threw up,” she would reminisce, laughing as Darcy wrinkled her nose in disgust, “Yes, it wasn’t a very elegant way to end my birthday. But it was certainly funny.”

Which, Darcy isn’t complaining about because it’s rent free room and board in the middle of Manhattan and also, a lot of sexy neighbors. Sure, these neighbors happen to be highly destructive and/or lethal but… well, it’s New York, right?

But living in the Stark/Avengers tower is what eventually causes her secret to become… not a secret. More specifically, living in the Stark/Avengers tower with JARVIS.

See, the thing is, Darcy’s ability doesn’t really make any sense. It doesn’t. She majored in political science, but even she knows that her ability makes no sense. Telepathy doesn’t even make sense, but at least that’s two people’s minds and not whatever she can do. Somehow she can communicate with machines. Which sort of begs the question, do machines have minds for her to communicate with?

JARVIS, she knows, is an artificial intelligence. He can speak and think and do pretty much whatever a person can. So there’s that. It makes sense for Darcy to be able to communicate with JARVIS. But it doesn’t explain how she knows her iPod prefers techno to pop or how her taser wishes it could be used more often or how her phone has a strange fascination with Etsy.

So she treats JARVIS much the same way she does other highly intelligent technology, with as much respect as she does with people. Perhaps more so, because the supercomputer at Culver was a major snob and she knows a lot of people who are nowhere near as great as JARVIS. But the important thing is, she interact with him silently.

Simply put, machines with personalities aren’t anything new to her. Machines with personalities which other people know about and can react to? Yeah that’s what trips her up.

It takes about three weeks before someone notices that she doesn’t need to speak out loud for JARVIS to understand her. The surprising part? It’s Bruce who notices.

~

A/N: Two Darcy Lewis drabbles for the price of one! Wooooh.

Unsure what to do with the Darcy, Barnes descendant drabble. It was just an idea I wanted to articulate. At some point, I imagine Steve and/or Bucky eventually try to track Becca down. Whether they actually find her, aged but still alive, or find Darcy instead I don’t know.

I was going to continue the Technopath!Darcy one with how Bruce keeps her secret since he’s basically the closest thing to a mutant the Avengers have and he kind of wishes the Hulk were a secret. I don’t know why I chose Bruce, but I like the way the story could evolve from there.